Parenting
by MeredithBrody
Summary: Brody watches Pride give baby Lucy back. (Ep tag for 1x20)(Prody)


**Well, finding Prody to write from this episode was close to impossible, but I did the thing and I am proud of it. So, there is a look in the last scene, right after Pride gives back the baby, that both Steph and I caught. The problem for Steph was that I called dibs on it. Hahahaha. Anyway. Here is my post-ep for 1x20. As always, there are spoilers included. Very, very light ones really. Please read and review!  
Shin xx**

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She'd watched him ever since she'd brought the dads back into the courtyard, mostly because watching him with a baby was pretty cute. She'd thought that when he'd managed to talk Anne into handing her over. Clearly though, Pride had noticed this time, as after he looked at Borin he turned to her and smirked a little, clearly thinking he knew what she was going to say. "Speak?" He asked, and she just smirked right back at him, deciding to drag it out.

"Looks like you almost didn't want to let her go." She commented, moving closer to him so as not to broadcast their entire conversation to the other agents in the courtyard. Not that it was anything particularly interesting the said.

"Reminded me of how much I enjoyed when Laurel was a baby." He really did have a wistful, far-away look on his face that told her he was thinking about that time and how he'd felt back then.

"Really?" She just couldn't really imagine having fond memories of the baby stage. That was something that was so foreign to her way of thinking that it surprised her. It wasn't that often that he could still surprise her.

"Father's and daughters, Merri." He started with a smirk, and she knew that there was going to be some smartass comment about her father still having a baby photo of her somewhere. The fact was she knew her dad carried pictures of her and Emily almost everywhere, and even now he didn't know who was who, but that wasn't going to get in the way of her teasing him.

"So you say." She tried to laugh it off, just grinning at him in a slightly sarcastic way that normally got him to leave her alone for a little while.

"I do say." He grinned back, stepping a little bit closer to her while she once again tried to fight back the giggles. It was easier said than done some days.

"Are they always like this?" Borin asked, clearly having chosen _that_ moment to pay attention to what they were talking about. She guessed it maybe wasn't that surprising given that they were the only ones talking. Maybe Borin and LaSalle had been paying attention and had just kept quiet, that was going to be something that she was paranoid about for a while.

"Like you wouldn't believe." LaSalle replied, a hint of enjoyment in his voice. He was probably just happy to have someone else there to laugh at them with, especially with Patton being unexpectedly in Aruba, that was a story that someone would need to tell her before long.

Pride clearly heard the two of them as well, but he was more adult than she was, while her brain was still in the '_stick your tongue out at them_' point, Pride was giving a fairly reasonable, and accurate, answer. "Only when we've closed out a case."

"How did I miss that?" Brody just glared back at the retreating backs of Borin and LaSalle and shook her head. How Borin had missed _what_ exactly, and why did that matter. Anyway, she wasn't going to think about that right now, she was instead going to go back to the conversation that she and Pride had been having.

"I'm not sure about kids, I was telling LaSalle that earlier." That had been the most awkward car ride she'd had in a long time. Largely because she didn't normally talk about a desire, or not, to have kids with anyone, least of all her work partner or pseudo-brother. She had been speaking truthfully though. Given that she was an agent she just didn't see how it would end well. "I can't see it ending anything other than badly."

"Laurel ended up pretty good." He made that point, and he was right. But they knew a lot of NCIS agents, and Laurel was the only grown child of any of them.

"Maybe, but given the ratio of adult kids to NCIS agents I know... Laurel may be the exception that proves the rule." Brody was actually certain that she was, and Pride was the most doting daddy even now that she could have ever imagined coming from slightly aloof parents.

"Well, you might find one day that you change your mind." He smiled and wrapped and arm around her shoulders, and while she was pretty sure she wouldn't, there was always the minute chance that she would.

"I'm not ruling it out, but I'm not ruling it in either." That was the limbo she was in on this matter, and unlike earlier in the car, discussing it with a romantic partner was nowhere near as awkward as it had been a work one."Let's just say, being a mom was never on the list of things I had to do before I died."

That clearly opened a whole other line of questioning to Pride, and Brody knew immediately that she was going to regret that. "What is on your bucket list?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out." She said, she might as well have made it a challenge since really the only thing on her bucket list right now was to survive until her 40th birthday. She was still a few years away.

"Don't make it a challenge, I know where you're ticklish." He threatened, and she was about to burst out laughing when she realised that LaSalle had come back out to join them. That would no doubt have been an amusing few minutes.

"That was a bad time to come out here at." He shook his head, clearly having heard more than he'd wanted to. "Come on, we have coffee and a front row seat to Borin and her dad arguing." Why didn't that surprise Brody. Of course only the CGIS agent could have gone in to call her father and say something nice and still end up arguing. Of course, that gave her another avenue to tease too.

"Is that also father's and daughter's?" She asked as sweetly as she possibly could, using his own words and phrasing a little while earlier against him.

"Shut up or I'll call yours." He replied, and she couldn't help but laugh at that. While both of her parents had been somewhat distant, she'd always gotten on with her father. Calling him was not the threat that Pride had thought it was.

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" She carried on teasing then shrugged, already knowing that nobody would talk to her mother unless they absolutely had to. "It's my mom I argue with."

"That's definitely mother's and daughter's." Pride teased, and while she admitted that he had a point, she also really wasn't in the mood for getting into a conversation about why she argued with her mother so much. There were a lot of things she considered fun, and talking about that would not be one of them.

"Shush." She replied and elbowed him gently as they all separated out to sit behind their desks and pretend not to be listening to half the phone call between Borin and her father. Well, who could really expect privacy in an NCIS office anyway, she really should have thought more about that. It was definitely something Brody was going to keep in mind from now on, especially given some of the things she'd done in this office. Nobody else needed to know any of that, so maybe the new rule was they went to hers.


End file.
